


Colors of Fury

by Selbie



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Based heavily on the books but nonetheless is a major Alternative Universe, Basically every character in Asoiaf can appear and be a POV if the story calls for it, Romances and pairings will reveal themselves in time, more tags to be added as the story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2020-12-31 08:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21124217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selbie/pseuds/Selbie
Summary: For centuries, House Targaryen has kept to their claimed lands and their isolated island of Dragonstone, dealing little with the Seven Kingdoms or the world beyond. Soon after the death of their tyrannical father, three Targaryen siblings decide to make right the fate of their House—with fire and blood.Or, the game changes but remains all the same.





	1. Chapter 1

_PROLOGUE: _

  
— _OSHA_ — 

The wildlings fled. The riders went after. Fourteen miles and a day they’ve harried and fell them by the score, wolves on the hunt for hare on the run. 

Mounted, the riders wore shades of black and numbered in the hundreds, wielding sword and bow with an unnatural, brutal mastery, wildly savage in their executions and endlessly merciless.

Mance Rayder had wanted the freefolk to raid south of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea to pull Crows from Castle Black, leaving it unable to split its numbers to defend the lesser guarded lands under Shadow Tower against the greater of the raiding parties led by the Lord of Bones. Yet what had met them were no Crows of Castle Black, or even Umbers of Last Hearth, but wolves. Bloody wolves that cared none for outsiders.

When the wildling running alongside Osha tripped from an arrow in the back, she turned and fell to her knees in the snow, arms aloft; if she had had her axe she would have thrown it far, far into the drifts.

“I yield,” she said when the rider came upon her, hands held high. Blinding sprays of snow flurred about around her as he reined in hard. Osha shuddered in relief as the horse snorted irritably over her head, moments away from trampling her. 

Very quickly the other riders broke around them like wraiths without form, hooves thundering as they hooted and hollered off beyond, leaving them there in the field alone. 

The first she noticed of him was that he was young. Comely and young. Barely six-and-ten if she were to judge. The second was his sword was unlike any she had ever seen; the metal was dark as smoke, almost black, and when it caught a muted shaft of sunlight it seemed to come alive as if enchanted, the heat borne at it’s heart stirring alive—it’s pattern were also queer, as if during forging it had captured within the fires used to shape it, warping the folds to ripple and dance and whorl not unlike the flame. 

“I yield,” she said again, for fear that he had perchance not heard her the first. She was going to say it thrice, but a white wolf backdropped by the snow appeared suddenly and startled her into a shocked jumble of words. 

There was no helping cowering away at the beast’s huge size. It would have reached her stomach if she were standing. Though she did not boast a stature worth any mention in passing she knew from it’s height alone this were no ordinary wolf, but a direwolf from beyond the Wall, here growing and feeding off the flesh of men, where it should not be. 

The direwolf’s eyes were a living red, and it's mussel was awash with inspissated blood. Even more worryingly, the hackle hairs about its thick neck bristled, it’s every footfall muted against the supple snow, the remaining prints nigh impossible to discern. It came close and bared its teeth to her, eerily quiet as it stalked round. 

The boy in black tugged on his palfrey’s reins and yawed to it’s flanks. “Ghost, to me,” he called calmly. 

Losing interest, the wolf went off behind him, sniffing a moment at the wildling corpse near her and then bounding into the wood foliage, it’s every lollop that of a starved beast intent on the hunt. 

“Remove that coat and show you have no weapons,” the boy ordered, sword brandished. 

The fur could not come off fast enough. As she did as told, he dismounted and pulled a length of rope from a saddlebag, and with his sword held in the other hand he approached her warily. 

Tossing aside the thick raiment, she held her wrists out and smiled derisively. “Oh, you afraid I might stick you with a knife hidden in me boot, m’lord?” she mocked, but before she could get another barb out he had kicked her in the chest and sent her sprawling back in the snow. At first she thought he meant to rape her, but then he had her flipped over onto her belly so that he could easier bind her arms behind her. 

“Up,” he grunted, pulling her roughly to her feet. 

Clumps of snow fell off her front, and she shivered from a chill that did not belong to the cold. Other riders were coming, back from where they had been chasing her kith and kin. She felt her stomach knot at the implication, but she did not cry; they had all known the risk of raiding, and the punishment if so happened captured. Like she was now, bound hand-to-hand. 

“Caught yourself a friend there, Lord Snow?” one asked, a burly giant with the beard of a man twice his age riding nothing less than a well-muscled courser. 

“She will be questioned,” this Lord Snow replied, sheathing his sword in one smooth motion and shoving her off into the hands of another, a man favoring the bow and a tilted grin. She struggled some in his grasp, but knew glumly that her efforts were pointless. At least they would not rape her...yet. 

The bowman tugged her to his mount and then hoisted her up into the saddle as if she were light as a southron maid. When sat astride she boldly kicked at the horse’s flanks, but it only pranced to the side and huffed at her, shaking its head in mild annoyance. The bowman laughed derisively and mounted up behind her; he pressed himself close, smirking when she glared back at him. 

They rode hard back north. Soon their number swelled from a dozen to close to a hundred. Which she realized made her earlier determination bloated. Many of the men talked at length, boasting of their kills and plunder with an easy air. Those around the boy that captured her were solemn. Quiet. 

Upon closer inspection, Osha could see their mounts were well lathered and slowing by the wend. The men themselves were—again unlike her previous assuming of being inexhaustible—pallid and sunken-eyed from sleep deprivation, their conversation wondering easily to food and bed and ale. Most of them were shockingly young like their Lord Snow. 

He, she saw, seemed to hold immense respect amongst these wild and uncouth men. He did not ride much close to the front, but it was he who set their course to the Wall. Lord Snow, or what ever may be his name, had a drawn and serious way about him. He were not prone to much but gloom and apathy, she could tell. What she _could_ see plainly was that he was as natural a leader as he was a warrior. Some men just had that about them, and Osha had seen it few times before—in Mance Rayder, in Father. A curiosity made her study this boy. 

Snow turned in the saddle to frown at her just like he would the road. “You wish to say something?” he asked. His eyes—what she thought were a dark grey at a cursory glance over her shoulder while face down in the snow—were a deep violet, so dark and beautiful they demanded all attention. 

Osha’s mouth fell open slightly in shock. “N-no,” was all she could reply before he turned away. She might have been miffed by the dismissal if she weren’t so dumbfounded. 

As a little girl, Osha had heard tales of highborn lords south of the Wall with the queer eyes of some long destroyed land across the Narrow Sea, who once rode dragons and fornicated with kin to keep their bloodline pure. She had also heard tale of giants. Osha understandably scoffed in disbelief to both, as any would do...Until a whole tribe of giants passed her by in the war-camp of Mance Rayder. Only now too did she believe in men with violet eyes. 

She soon learned the man sharing horse with her was Larence Snow, as he was only addressed by full name—rather mockingly in most cases. If she remembered soundly, Snow was one of many surnames southron people so honorably bestowed onto their sons and daughters born out of wedlock. An unnecessary custom if there ever was one. This Lord Snow then was the object of much scorn, too, though it was verily seen more than spoken, unlike with the Snow seated behind her. 

Osha picked out two other names in company of these Snows, the bastard who were a lord, and the bastard who was not. There was the seven-foot giant ironically called Smalljon, who was largesse with his boisterous laugh and interminably boastful; and a smiley, handsome youth with a sally for everything named Clay. Unnamed but present, there was a man who wore laminar plate armour unlike his companions, who were garbed in studded boiled leather lined with fur, and the queer looking one, with eyes so pale they seemed blind and a mouth so pinched it were like he were without lips. Osha found the lot of them poor company.

The Wall wept. Scintillated like so many pools of frozen ice. The muted sun was out, and a norther could be seen gathering beyond on the break of the patent blue-grey horizon. Here the Wall was so far off it looked as if she could step over it one leg at a time. Mountains and their tributaries rose up around them, cradling the surrounding forest and the road they trod upon. Snow-capped peaks, shoulders, and brows rose into the clouds, as if the old gods of nature had tried to bridge up to the realm of the false Seven Gods of Light. 

In the break from a holloway they came upon riders from the west, riders in black that were familiar and known to her captors. The old, grizzly man at their head greeted them. “Jon Snow, I see your hunt went well,” he said, a crow perched on his shoulder echoing the boy’s name and ruffling it’s black plumage. The bird turned and blinked one beady eye at her. “And the number amongst you Wolves has grown.” 

Jon Snow nodded, frowning back at Osha. “Aye, Lord Commander.” 

Every wildling knew the name of the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and wanted to slay him besides. “Good,” said Jeor Mormont. “Ride with me, Lord Snow.” 

The bastard trod up beside him, and the two processions merged silently into one, a shadowy company of Crows and Wolves palled in faded and tattered blacks. The Crows were grimer than the Wolves, as they seemed to have faired far less favorably when it came to their hunting. Jeor Mormont said as much. 

“Lord of Bones escaped me. Him and a dozen others. They took their way back up north and slipped past the Wall as if it were easy as taking a piss.” He spat a glob of phlegm onto the snowy berm alongside them. “Farther back you’ll see the dead and dying,” he grumbled. Jon Snow had took this news in grim silence, and said nothing. 

One of the officers said something to them that Osha could not hear, as she was drifting to the back with Larence Snow, who was more interested in the dead and dying. “What are you doing?” she hissed at him. 

“I want you to see what your people did,” Larence replied stoically. “I want you to know that what awaits you is far, far worse. The Night’s Watch can be cruel to raiders.” 

“I’m not afraid,” she spat back in defiance. 

Yet when the first man came limping by all bound in redspotted linen about the head, and others followed behind, injured, bleeding, moaning and groaning pitifully, Osha could not help but watch them. Her heart was hard against them, for she knew that her kith and kin were dead, and these men were amongst the living, maimed and wounded as they were, but alive. There was no pity in her. She glowered down at all of them, wishing they fell where they stood and never got back up.

Dimpsy fell anon. They bivouacked in a gully long and wide enough to hold the hundred and score of them, bedding down under deadfalls and the lee of rock outcroppings, setting alight small personal fires, silent in their misery and languor. 

Snowfall drifted crosswise through a twisted canopy of sentinel and soldier pines dressed in hardy green needles. Larence Snow had her fed a butt of stale bread then bound to a tree, with neither shelter over her head nor a blanket to warm her. Osha, shivering and spiteful, glared at every man that passed and would spit on any she could; they would either go away laughing or kick snow at her and sneer. 

Jon Snow came to her alone when moonlight illumined the needle-fall and snow covered ground, when the men were but black mounds under their blankets and cloaks, and the fires were but burning embers smoking in their pits. His black hair was limned in twilit silver; snowflakes caught in the curls and clung there. He was without his wolf. 

Snow’s handsome face was as still and pale as ice on a tarn. His eyes were dim amethysts in two hollows shadowed by a brow, all dark of the night absorbing into their depths. He spoke quietly to her, softly. “The Wolven Company has given you over to the Night’s Watch. Give them what they ask and they will treat you gently—I made the Lord Commander swear that much.” He spoke then without inflection. “But if you don’t they will torture you, that I promise.” 

Osha laughed suddenly; long and loud, till Crows and Wolves were shouting at her to quiet down. She went unabated until she had her a good fill, and when she was done she grinned at this fool boy. “I have nothing to give them, _m’lord_. Everything I say will be useless in a sennight. Mance does not stay long anywheres, does not give privy to his plans but to few. I can squawk like a crow and it would do me no good.”

Plumes of hot mist escaped Snow’s parted lips. And when he finally spoke, calmly, every word freed more clouds of warm breath. “Any information is good information,” he said. “Do as you’re told and don’t make trouble.” 

“Your concern flatters me,” Osha replied derisively, spitting right in his face. Thick and green the phlegm dripped down his cheek as he stared at her in muted shock. 

Triumphant, she leant back against her tree to watch it fall, smiling darkly. “Piss off, bastard, before I start screaming of rape. I will if you don’t, _that I promise_,” she mocked. 

Frowning and shamed, he went without a word, becoming an indiscernible shadow amongst all the others, his anger leaving him no concern for her. Osha chuckled and rolled the back of her head against the tree bark for a moment in an amused shake of the head. Men like this Jon Snow were careful to keep their precious honor intact, though here she could not say that any would care if he did take her by force. They might even encourage it to keep her quiet and downtrodden. 

Osha lingered between asleep and awake for the rest of that night, shivering and wet and muddy against her sentinel tree. By dawn her wrists were bloody and chafed and irritable, her blue lips cracked from cold and her mouth dry. It was a brother of the Night’s Watch that came to untie her. He had big ears, a long neck, and the wide ugly smile of a toad. “Up and at ‘em, wench. Lord Commander wants us back at Castle Black by day’s end,” he said, always smiling his froggy smile. 

On the road, the Toad had her stumbling in the mud behind his horse, a length of rope wrapped around the horn of his saddle tugging her along. Some of the black brothers, having heard of her attacks last night, spat sweetleaf residue on her as they came up alongside her, showering her in sticky red and going on ahead laughing and boasting while she wiped away as much of the sick liquid as she could. 

Osha had never been to Castle Black, the roost of the Crows. She had not known what to expect of any castle, in truth, even from tales. But it was not this secular holdfast more pregnable and far less grand than she had been led to believe. 

About the crenellations and watch-towers worked the brothers in black, their moving along great with fervor and purpose. The castle itself was built of stone, old and derelict, worked with mortar and brick four wythes thick, bereft the strong binding spells and huge ice blocks of the Wall she was so familiar with. Roofs of dim slate tiles were shelved atop the many towers abutted to the sheer ice and curtain wall defense, and a crude wooden lift climbed the height of the Wall pulled by a cranking winch. 

Many sworn brothers sallied forth to meet them in the grey cast before dusk, the castle gate swinging open on their slow and languishing approach. First in were the wounded, the officers and rangers overseeing the limping procession enter the courtyard from the berm in a grim, unsmiling silence. Osha felt pride that they did not exult in their victory, as they had suffered many by the hands of her people. The Toad tugged on her hard when she stopped to smile nastily at the officers and their Lord Commander; she might have curtsied insolently for them if he hadn’t. 

He took her across the yard to a wooden door banded with iron and nestled into the ice of the Wall. Within, a carven tunnel lead ever down onward. The light of their torch turned the glossy blue-white interior into the raging colors of fury. Droplets of water dribbled down from the ceiling, and as they went along a black brother broke off the long icy fangs that had begun to grow and freeze there. Twice Osha nearly fell—bereft of her usual sure-footing, exhausted besides—but the Toad kept her aloft, tugging her along ever deeper, his laughter crackling in tune with the ice. The air grew unbearably cold, cold enough that even a free-woman like Osha shivered and shuddered. Echoing from without was the groan of the four-hundred feet of ice above them, the sound of which was amplified by the narrow space of the tunnel that wound like a horn. 

After what felt like ages of walking and stumbling through the cold and dark, they came to a straight of even-grounded tunnel more maintained and looked after than the rest. Like windows in a long stretch of hall, gaols of black-iron marched one by one down the sides, empty, unlit, dressed in hoarfrost crust armour old as the summer. They took her to the end of the hall, to the very last of them, and threw her in bodily. Slipping up on pools of ice trying to catch her footing, she smashed into the ground and slid into the wall, crying out in pain. 

Scrambling to the corner and squeezing herself in it, Osha shivered visibly as she glared at the men gathered at her gaol’s door, the light of their torches blinding her in the dark. The frost and snowfall that had gathered on her coat and face were freezing in a light crust, and the water earlier thawed by her body heat was seeping deep and solidifying onto her gooseflesh pricked skin. 

The Toad was grinning cruelly at the head of the black brothers. “Enjoy your sojourn,” he laughed, slamming the iron door hard enough to send a shower of frost onto her. 

And there they left her, the light they bore and their voices fading away, leaving her in the dreary dark, freezing, frustrated, and afraid. Curling up in her corner, she shuddered violently from the cold and wondered if she would survive the Wall. 

She would will it so, she swore there in the damp, the hatred in her heart hardening into stone. She swore it to the Old Gods she would gut the bastard Jon Snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all, I hope you enjoyed.
> 
> Wow, I haven't posted a fanfiction since like 2016. It feels weird being back in the game, but it's also exciting to show off all the hard work I've put into improving as a writer. Unfortunately, updates will be slow. College holds much of my attention, yes, but I am a perfectionist to a disturbing and unhealthy degree, which keeps many chapters held back for long periods of time. Also doesn't help I have the worst work ethic in the world.
> 
> Anywhoooo, any feedback or suggestions will be welcomed with open arms. See ya!


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_ **—** DAENERYS I **— ** _

“You must look perfect for him,” her brother said, throwing away a cloth-of-gold dress with an ebony surcoat wrought with nacre buttons and plucking up a ruby-colored chemise so short and sheer she could see his gaunt fingers through the fabric. “But you mustn’t dress like a whore.” That one was thrown into the hearth to go up like kindling.

Daenerys was to marry Rhaegar one day—Viserys was adamant of that, even though Rhaegar was already married to Elia Martell of Dorne. “The sand slut will collapse one day. Have you seen how thin she is? How sickly? Then our brother will look to you for sons, sons born without Dornish taint in them,” he had said. 

Rhaegar did not treat her like that. Some mare to breed. He was as kind as an elder brother should be, and did not lust over her like Viserys did. He called her little sister and kissed her on the forehead, told her she was beautiful only because he knew it to be true.

“No, no, _ no! _ None of these will do!” Viserys stormed shrilly, his thin neck welting red. He tore a bodice of fine shiny silk from a seamstress’ hands and ripped it down the middle violently, laces flying everywhere. “Find something _ else_.” The servants fled the room in a flurry of skirts and shocked gasps.

Daenerys watched, saying nothing, doing nothing, even though her heart ached with defiance. When Rhaegar was away, Viserys took to being cruel with an alacrity she had only seen in their father. He would frequently torment her with nasty japes and crude remarks, digging his fingers into her arms or breasts. 

Once he had nearly choked her to death when she was bold enough to defend a stablehand who’d fetched him the wrong horse. When Rhaegar had seen the dark, long finger prints welting on her neck, he had also nearly killed Viserys in his cold rage. Ever since Viserys has been careful to bruise and bled her where Rhaegar could not easily see, and to threaten her with more pain if she complained to their brother.

“Useless, all of them.” Viserys poured himself some wine from the decanter in the corner and came to sit back onto her bed of down, swirling fine arbor-red around the goblet brim and leaning against a bed-post. His smile was twisted. It brought out the hollow features of his cheekbones and the cruelness in his eyes. “Come here, sweet sister,” he commanded, sickenly saccharine, his pale lilac eyes peering queerly over the goblet’s golden brim as he took a sip. Daenerys went. She did not want to wake the dragon. She never wanted to wake the dragon, not since he almost killed her in the shadows of the stables. Yet every step felt closer to her death. “Come, come,” he urged her benignly, fauxly. 

She stood downtrodden before him. Her toes curled in the soft carpet below her feet. Her eyes saw through glass as she felt an overwhelming numbness of body and mind; nary a breath left her. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and legs, and her heartbeat flooded into her ears, thump thump _ thump_. 

He touched her hand first. Almost tenderly. Up it went to her shoulder, staying there a moment to then slide down with a brush to her collarbone, coming to rest on her breast, the fingers beginning to squeeze and tweak her nipple till it were poking through her dress. Daenerys felt little but a fluttering of it all. She merely stood still and let him do as he willed. Because she could do none else.

“And if you are not perfect for him, you will be for me,” he said quietly, but in the chilling silence of the room it was plain to hear. He twisted his fingers, hard enough to have her wincing in pain and cowering away from him, her arms coming to cover her chest. 

Viserys shot to his feet, his wine spilling all over as something like a hiss came spitting through his teeth. “Where are you going? Do you want to wake the dragon, sweet sister? Come here!” He latched onto her arm hard enough to draw blood with his yellowed, unkempt fingernails. He pulled her back violently and curled his other hand roughly around her neck, his goblet clanking on the floor and rolling away somewhere under her bed. This grip, she noticed faintly, was lighter than the one on her arm, but no less threatening.

“I ought to fuck you right here, you little slut,” he said in her ear, his breath stinking of wine and something so rank it brought tears to her eyes. “I see how you look at me.” He shoved her away suddenly and Daenerys went down on her hip hard, tearing her skirt and cutting up her knee and thigh on the rough stone floor beneath the disheveled carpet and rushes. 

“How many men a night do you take to your bed?” he asked with loathing. “One? Two? More, mayhaps? I bet you have them lined up outside your door to take their turn. Do they pay you a copper for your troubles, sweet sister? Or do you take your pleasure and give them a copper for theirs?”

Daenerys had no idea how he came to think this. “_ No, _ ” she sobbed. “_Never. _” 

Scowling, Viserys wiped spittle from his chin and looked at her in disgust. “Liar.” He went out the door in a fury, taking the decanter of arbor wine with him on the way out. The door slammed hard enough to send paintings and tapestries off the walls. 

Daenerys knelt there for what seemed like hours, crying softly against the sheets of her bed to muffle her sobs. A soft click of the door, and slow, timid footsteps made her brush away the tears and stand to face the gathering of servants and ladies-in-waiting. Her favorite, Doreah, came to comfort her in her arms. 

“Out,” the handmaid ordered the others, “I will see to her.” She led Daenerys to a chair in front of the vanity set, wiping away the tears that began to fall anew with the pad of her thumb. The Lysene hushed her tenderly and took up a brush to smooth out the twists in her silver-gold hair. 

Eyes red-rimmed and sniffling, Daenerys whispered, “I _ hate _ him.”

Doreah shushed her. “You mustn’t say that. He is to be Lord of Aegonfort.” 

“Do I not hold that right, either? Do I not get to be an heir to anything?” she wondered aloud. “Am I not as much a Targaryen as him? And would certainly be a better lord?”

“It is complicated, sweetling. The world is cruel, and men are crueler. They’re prideful in their power and don’t want to admit a woman can be better at it than them.” Doreah paused in her brush strokes. “Must be why they are all so stupid.” They both giggled, and Daenerys felt her mood lighten considerably.

Doreah had her hair shining and her puffy face glowing and smiling when she was done, the wounds on her leg and arm cleaned and wrapped gently in clean white linen. The handmaid had picked out a loose, long-sleeved ebony dress of shining satin held up by a twisted golden torc with dragon heads at the ends, tightened together by a ruby crusted, low cut, bone-framed corset. 

Daenerys had started to protest at the swooping neck-line, but Doreah placed a finger against her lips to hush her. “You are a woman now, my lady. Show them that you have a woman’s shape. Do not let your brother shame you for your beauty.” She pulled Daenerys up by both hands and smiled prettily.

“Now come. Lord Rhaegar’s galleon _ Flamebright _has been sighted in the bay. People of Dragonstone have been coming ashore all day, he is surely to follow anon. And we would not want to keep him waiting, would we?” Daenerys could not smile any wider. Her joy could not grow any farther past their bounds. 

Hand in hand, they went. An entourage of ladies gathered and fluttered after them, and her sworn-swords appeared from the side halls to follow behind them silently. 

Viserys would send them all away when he had a torturous mood upon him. They all knew what happened when he sent them off, but none could do a thing about it since Rhaegar was gone for long stretches of time and barely had time to speak to her or her companions even when present. And as Doreah had said, Viserys was Lord of Aegonfort when Rhaegar was away. At his word he could have any of them thrown in a black cell. She had warned them of such, and quelled any of their rebellious thoughts. 

Her knights, in all their doughty and leal glory, were: Ser Rayfred Rosby, known as Bloody Rosby for his true-red hair and the messy, gorey tale of his knighting; Ser Stannon Buckwell, affectionately sobriqueted as Buck—a lean, vainglorious, and haughty youth that walked with the pride befitting a well-matured stag; and Ser Buford Brune, a taciturn and diffident, dark haired man near seven feet tall, who was well liked and well regarded, with a reputation for preferring books over swords and songs over words, being also known as Buford the Brute—a misnomer if there ever was one. Not in attendance was Ser Howl Pyle, nephew to a landed knight, and a squat, ruddy faced, balding man prone to disappearing for long bouts under reasons unknown, who would always talk to Daenerys sweetly and call her, “Little Dragon.” 

Also missing was another of her ladies-in-waiting, Ewely Rambton, who oft took her morning prayers long into the noon hours. She was of the Seven Gods of Light, sent by her uncle Lord Hubard Rambton as an example of the goodness of the Faith, mayhaps to perchance convert her Targaryen mistress if she would have it. 

Daenerys herself did not find gods or their edicts at the forefront of her daily thoughts like Ewely did. She were of the blood of the dragon, and, “Dragons bow to no one,” her brother would say. And if Rhaegar said it, and believed it, she too would—with all her heart. 

“You look stunning, my lady,” praised Alysson Velaryon, a girl of an age with Daenerys. With her old Valyrian blood, Alysson nearly looked her image, with her blue eyes and golden hair so light it looked silver. It were true when people said in the right light they would look sisters.

“As she always does,” agreed Ser Rayfred, looking rather dashing himself in his freshly shined armor and with his red beard cropped close to his jaw. He had been long anticipating this day, mayhaps more than Daenerys herself has. Knights like the Bloody Rosby were always eager to impress themselves on a newly-made lord.

Her father, Aerys Targaryen, second of his name, had died not a moon’s turn ago, and Daenerys had not wept once. In fact, she has felt nothing but relief. The tyranny and the madness that had grown and festered in her father had become nigh inescapable during the last months of his life. Paranoia, even against his very blood(especially against his blood, in truth), had ruled like a fist squeezing the life from him. He would not eat his food unless it was tasted at least a dozen times, in turn making him lose several stone until he were but bones and skin, and he would not let any sharp implement but the blades of his sworn-swords come near his person, so his hair and beard grew long and unwashed, his nails lengthening into that of dirty yellow claws curling in on themselves. As cruelly as it may seem, Daenerys was happy her father was burnt to ash on his funeral pyre and thrown to the sea winds. Now it was Rhaegar who were lord, and Rhaegar loved her and would never mistreat her.

It would seem no knight was more eager to swear his sword to her brother than their Buck. Ser Stannon said as much as they descended the stairwell. “I hope he sees me worthy enough to take into his personal guard,” he said excitedly, his eyes gazing out at far distant glories that awaited him in his mind; mayhaps he hoped to defeat Ser Barristan the Bold, or Ser Jaime Lannister in single combat, or take a great joust as it’s champion, all the things a proud and fresh knight would dream of.

Elinda Massey rolled her own eyes and scoffed. “You would abandon us so soon, Ser Buck?” A dark, curly haired lass, with the pointed face of a weasel and the aquiline nose of a raven, Elinda was some distant cousin to Lord Josua Massey of Stonedance, a house sworn to Storm’s End, but a close ally to House Targaryen. She was eight-and-ten, said by whisper to have kissed just as many stablehands and squires, which Daenerys found to just be idle bruiting. Elinda was too shy for such acts.

“I hear the Sword of the Morning guards Lord Rhaegar,” added Lady Alysson. “Why would he need your steel if he’s got the greatest swordsman in the realm by his side?”

“It’s all so _ exciting_!” Lollys Stokeworth said suddenly, loud and gaily. Poor Lollys was, in all sense of the word, witless. Obese, moon-faced, and always smelling faintly of her last meal, she was thirty-three and unwed, her chances at marriage slipping away year by year. “I just cannot _ wait _ to see all the knights in their armour! What a _ sight _ it shall be!”

“What a sight it shall be,” echoed Elinda, grinning wickedly.

Ser Stannon said nothing, but his face had turned florid and his hand gripped tight to the pommel of his sword, the whole of his body shaking in humiliated rage. He looked near an outburst, but it were not honorable for a knight to yell at a lady he was sworn to protecting—Daenerys had seen to dealing with that particular bad habit of Ser Stannon’s. 

Ser Buford was walking behind them holding the hand of two-and-ten Cassella Staunton. Buford the Brute had taken a special quiet affection to the guileless and unassuming Cassella, who he saw as something of a daughter needing protecting. 

Doe-eyed and budding into beauty, Cassella was small and slight, with mouse brown hair rolled gently into ringlets. The two made for a stark pair, the giant, mean faced man and the smiley, shining little girl. “Lord Rhaegar will decide the matter,” the Brute said shortly in his deep timbres voice. “Now go. We do not want to keep him waiting.”

The Great Hall was filled with every notable person in the entire castle; from the menials, to the soldiers, to the gentry. And hung there from the ceiling by great black-iron chains were the dragon skulls, monstrous things so tall and wide they would not fit through a portcullis, with bones polished to a lustrous ebony shine. The largest of them possessed jaws so monstrous they could swallow three well-muscled destriers whole. 

Tapestries depicting the histories and legends of House Targaryen hung from the walls, blown boldly by the hot summer winds rushing in from the iron-and-wood doors opened wide at the foot of the hall. Flying from the great bloodstone columns were banners sewn with the Targaryen sigil; a red three-headed dragon on black. 

Elinda pointed out a man with her familiar features and coloring. “Look, there’s my cousin!” He was a tall man, mayhaps one-and-twenty, with harsh angles and an interminable frown.

Others of note were among Lord Josua Massey. There was Ardrian Celtigar, Lord of Claw Isle, a sour old man with a twist pinched mouth and a mantle fashioned with ruby-encrusted crabs; Tanda Stokeworth, Lady of Stokeworth, a bitter, ferret faced woman; and Monford Velaryon the Drifter, Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark, a handsome man with the regal features of Valyria, and a legendary seafarer who’d accumulated wealth only seen before in House Velaryon by the Sea Snake, Corlys Velaryon.

Descending to the main floor, Doreah tugged Daenerys to her side and whispered in her ear, “Send for me if you have need. I must see to cleaning the mess in your chambers.”

Daenerys squeezed her hand and whispered back, “Go. Take the rest of the night for yourself. I will not be in danger any longer. Rhaegar is here. My brother is back.” Doreah kissed her quickly on the cheek and disappeared into the flow of the coming people, a single Lyseni bright against a crowd of Westerosi.

A smiling Elinda led them to her cousin with giddy prances, and an excited Lollys ran and picked her mother up in a fierce hug and spun her around, big fat tears streaming down her moon face as she wept. 

Lady Tanda separated herself gently from the hysterical girl. “Yes, yes, sweetling,” she said soothingly. “Mother missed you very much.” 

Lord Monford turned and bowed to Daenerys with the grace of a dancer—or a duelist, however you might look it. “My lady,” he said with a dazzling smile that turned heads, that even had Daenerys’ heart fluttering in her chest as a feather might in a sea-breeze. 

Lord Josua had merely squeezed his cousin’s hand as she sidled up to him. His eyes were for the Great Hall’s doors alone. Lord Ardrian sniffed disdainfully at them and stepped a bit farther from the group, all grouchy mutters and old grumps.

Duram Bar Emmon, Lord of Sharp Point, a rotund man-child of five-and-ten dressed in sumptuous velvet finery trimmed in white seal, approached. He was attended to by his most trusted advisor and uncle, Togar Bar Emmon, a rough, sea-tested old man with a wiry salt-and-pepper beard and one eye. Lord Duram bowed clumsily to Daenerys and mumbled pleasantries. 

The stern-faced Renfred Rykker, Lord of Duskendale, stood near a lit brazier glowering balefully at the gathering group, the colors of fury reflecting ominously in his eyes. Shadowing him was the soft faced, diffident William Mooton, Lord of Maidenpool. Gyles Rosby, Lord of Rosby, was near at hand as well, surrounded by his many advisors and ever lost to his coughing fits.

Guncer Sunglass, Lord of Sweetport Sound, was between the two huge open doors at the end of the Great Hall, standing there bathed in sunlight pontificating loudly to the crowd. A man in his middling years, he had found the gods in his thirties and never seemed to have lost his like of them. 

“Brothers! Sisters! The Seven Faces of God have blessed us this day!” he announced. “We stand here, washed in Their light, to bare our eyes to the birth of a new age! One of a complete and utter unity our realm has never seen before! By our faith, and by our belief in Lord Rhaegar, we have gathered to strengthen the ties of the Blacklands in the name of the Seven!” A roar of shouts and cheers went out. But, nay, not for Lord Guncer. For _ Rhaegar_. 

He was ascending the steps to the Great Hall one at a time, a personal guard bristling with spear and shield pushing back the voracious crowd. Beside him walked Jon Connington, Lord of Griffin’s Roost and foster father to her nephew Aegon. Lord Connington and Rhaegar have been friends since boyhood, when the relations between their differing kingdoms of the Blacklands and the Stormlands had been well beyond that of neighboring kingdoms—though that was some twenty years ago, before her father went mad and ruined many of those age long amities.

There also was Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Hung there from the knight’s back was the greatsword _ Dawn_, an infamous blade of pale steel forged from the molten heart of a stranded star. Daenerys had heard much of the Sword of the Morning from letters with Rhaegar. The two had become fast friends on Rhaegar's many travels around the Seven Kingdoms, and the friendship may have been the conduit to the marriage between Rhaegar and Elia Martell, as Arthur’s sister Ashara was close friends and lady-in-waiting to Elia, and the two may have met and fallen in love through them. Though that assumption was merely the thoughts of a much younger, more nieve Daenerys. Now she suspected the marriage was more for Dorne’s support rather than for love, as Rhaegar seemed only the faintest hint of fond of his lady-wife.

“Make way,” the guards said, along with, “Move aside,” and, “Back away.” 

The crowd moved closer, obscuring her view of Rhaegar with a wall of bodies. When she found him again, he was further along in walking the length of the hall to the massive chair of red-stained stone at the end, shining in a raiment of the finest make. His boots were choice calfskin darkened with preserving oils, his slim trousers a fine black wool, his similarly black doublet stitched with red and buttoned with gold, his gloves a supple kidskin. A half-cape of shimmering crimson satin flowed down his arm and chest, clasped there by a brooch of three dragon heads caging a ruby the size of a pigeon egg. At his hip was the Valyrian-steel sword _ Dark Sister_. 

Somehow Viserys had slipped in beside him. How he got through that wall of poised spear-tips she could not know. _ He is a snake in dragon’s scale_, she reminded herself, pushing people aside as she followed her brothers toward the head of the Great Hall. She could hear her ladies-in-waiting asking her to slow down but she paid them no heed. Her sworn-swords eventually forced their way to her and took up the task of pushing through the throng. 

Her brother’s voice echoed through the hall suddenly. He must have reached the Bloodstone Chair. “Many welcomes,” he said in a voice that was rich, deep, and pleasant to listen to. A singer’s voice. “Your presence is needed in this time of mourning, and I am grateful to all of you for leaving your homes to be here. 

“My father did not die a loved man. We all know this. You’ve all been witness in some way to his cruelty, but you also know I have done in what was my limited power to keep us together. That is why we are all here today despite my father’s best efforts to rend the Blacklands apart. Now it is time I ask of you to keep faith in House Targaryen, to keep faith in me and my siblings, to keep faith in all that I have promised you.” There was a cheer so deafening and immense it rattled the dragon skulls where they hung. Rhaegar did not have to try hard for the people to love him.

Rhaegar opened a hand to the bottom steps of the dias. “Come. Swear your allegiances, my lords, my ladies, my friends. ” One by one the men and women went, and then all together, so many the guards had to set the chaos right again; they lined them up and let each swear their oaths, with either their sword or their skirts spread at their feet as they knelt and said the words.

“Your brother breaths and he inspires loyalty,” mused Ser Buford, his thick brows pinched, his frown deepening. He was conflicted.

Daenerys placed a gentle hand on his gauntlet. “Go,” she said quietly. Ser Buford hesitated a moment, and then followed on the heels of her other sworn-swords; he brushed past Lord Monford on his way to her.

“And just like that my House is sworn to yours once again, my lady.” The Drifter smiled in a well-meaning way. “I wonder when we will learn better.” 

Daenerys smiled faintly. “We all do things we do not understand, my lord.” 

He laughed briefly and richly, and when he spoke again his voice was warmed with amusement. “Very true, very true indeed.” 

He suddenly stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I do not in fact understand, my lady, why a certain man—with no sigil or title and a face no one seems to care to remember—came to me with the offer to be the Master of Ships of the very keep we stand in? I certainly cannot be Master of Ships to both Aegonfort and Dragonstone. I would be spread thin, and Lord Rhaegar would be left with a scission and a diminishment of his fleet. My lord verily knows this himself...” His tone took on an unassuming quality, but it was edged sharply with conspiracy. Darnerys was shaken momentarily, but it did not shift the contours of her face. 

“Mayhaps, my lord, Rhaegar sent this man to you without a letter of legitimacy? He has much going through his mind and may have simply forgotten to pen the words. Or it may be that someone wishes to sew mistrust in my brother’s newly made lordship?” she suggested evenly, half a pitch from reprimandation. 

“Mayhaps,” Lord Monford agreed, many words left unsaid by his pinched mouth. He leaned away just as abruptly as he did coming. His dashing smile was suddenly back in its rightful place, but to her it seemed much more faux and strained. “I hope to see you at the feast tonight. You would honor me greatly with a dance?” 

Daenerys curtsied somewhat coldly. She was still rattled by the revelation and had forgotten her pleasantries for a moment. “It would be all mine,” she said while bobbing. Turning, she made her way through the people to the side of the dias, pushing her way to the fore. Kneeling there at the base was a knight of House Connington, behind him knights of House Rykker, Rosby, and Massey, until there was no knight at all, but a lady—Lady Alysson, who was more courtly and beautiful than a woman had the right to be. 

Daenerys pushed down the twinge of jealousy that arose in her belly, and spoke to the guard in front of her. “Do you recognize me, Ser?” He gave her a look over and then—understanding her intentions—curtly stood aside, allowing her through, just as swiftly closing the gap. She went to stand beside Rhaegar but Viserys blocked her way. 

His smile could curdle milk. “Sweet sister, a word?” he said, sidestepping when she tried to walk past him, obviously not really giving her the choice of declining. 

“What?” she snapped, bold and defiant. He would not hurt her here in sight of several hundred pairs of eyes. She could see her insolence made him wrothful; his eyes narrowed into a glare and his lips curled back over his teeth, nigh a snarl. It stoked the rebellious flame that had been growing inside her for years and years.

In a single step Viserys towered over her. She bent her head to meet him squarely. He would hurt her for this. His twisted, ugly features told as much. Later, when the chaos died down, he would find her alone and enact his wrath. She did not care. Her blood in that moment was boiling hot as dragonflame. She felt untouchable with Rhaegar here. She _ was _untouchable. Rhaegar would settle in Dragonstone for good and take her with him, and Viserys would be left here to enact their brother’s edicts, as the younger was required to when his elder became lord.

“You tell him what I did to you and I will kill you where you stand. I will throw you to the horses in their stables and let them fuck your corpse.” He jabbed her chest with a sharp, gaunt finger. “Hear me, you little whore?” 

“I do, dear brother.” She pat him on the cheek and stepped past him, smiling brightly. She will never have to feel his wrath again.

Lord Josua Massey was knelt at the foot of the dias when she stepped up beside Rhaegar. He did not look at her, but he took her hand and squeezed it in greeting. His tall, comforting presence brought her relief from moons of anxieties and stresses. “You should be in bed,” he said shortly, but before he could say any more Lord Josua spoke.

“You do not remember me, my lord,” he said. “But I certainly know what you did for me, and it brings me great joy to see you.” Rhaegar had a look of puzzlement. “You, my lord, you once sojourned at Stonedance on your travels. I was but a babe then, but nonetheless a rascal who would wonder from his poor milkmaid every moment he could.” There was a general laughter and Rhaegar smiled, his memory somewhat reminded—like all of Rhaegar, the smile was kind, and patient, made you love him without much effort.

Lord Massey bowed his head low. He seemed ashamed. “One particular day you dined with my lord-father and lady-mother on the beaches, as they were wont to do when they wished to impress a guest. For all my foolish youth, I happened to feel extra adventurous that day. I waddled my way down to the surf on my own, and fell in love testing how far I could wade into the waters. A fearless and foolish boy. 

“We all know how temperamental the sea can be. When I was bold and far enough, it swept me up and out into the depths. It all happened so fast, I was swallowing water and turning every which way before I could truly begin to panic. I would certainly have died if you hadn’t dived in to save me. And for that, my family and I owe you a tremendous debt, that which cannot be repaid.” Lord Massey pressed his forehead against the floor as he bowed far below his station.

“Please accept my service,” he pleaded. “I know I am sworn to Storm’s End but I feel the Seven have another need for me by your side, my lord.” 

There was a silence. Rhaegar shocked everyone but descending the dias and pulling Lord Massey from the floor. He clasped arms with the young man and squeezed. “Stannis is a cousin of mine, he will see reason if given the words. I would be lucky to have you as my friend, and as my bannerman.”

The stoic, diffident Lord Massey looked close to weeping. The eruption of cheers hid his sob. Rhaegar nodded, smiled, and sent him on his way, saying a few words to him that were deafened in the roar. Rhaegar returned to his place beside her and quieted the crowd. “Thank you all again. I hope as your lord I can be satisfactory. With no one left to pledge fealty, our first court gathering concludes, but do stay around for the feast tonight, it will convene at—“

“Brother,” interrupted Viserys, his smile sweet and flattering, a twisted caricature of an unctuous fool. “I have an announcement. If I may?” Rhaegar stepped aside, none the wiser. If there was anything that blinded Rhaegar, it was the love of his siblings. While, aye, he knew Viserys had nearly killed her, he believed the matter settled and their relationship as siblings mended. But he could not be farther from the truth.

Viserys practically sauntered to the head of the dias, smiling cockily at her. He rose his voice over the din. “Lords, Ladies! I would like to announce that in just a sennight’s time there will be a tourney held in my brother’s honor! The top of the lists will be bestowed 30,000 dragons!” The cheering and laughter and excitement reached an even higher crescendo. 

Rhaegar had a look of pure disapproval on his face. He did not hate tourneys, but he certainly hated paying for one, as he’d handled most of the finances in the closing years of their father’s lordship, who was wont to declare a tourney whenever he wished to see spilt blood, which was often. Yet there was nothing to be done about it now.

Viserys smiled brightly, laughed, and clapped his brother on both shoulders. “Smile, brother, we all _ love _and want to celebrate you_,_” he said. 

Daenerys could not be so sure of that statement, with all that anger and jealousy tinging the edges of his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

_ — ROBB I — _

About the foot of Flint Cliffs, slate-grey waves of the Sunset Sea broke against basalt stacks, fomenting and thrashing and sibilating madly with a white lumpy mass of frothing spume like film on the surface, limpets and cockles and other bivalves clinging steadfast in the undersea, swarms of great auks bouncing and honking about the slick sea stumps. About the headland’s chest, seagulls nested in the porous hollows of the precipice, squawking inanely and taking wing under the early morning sky to circle the populous haunts of littoral shoals. And about the very head of the bluff was a barren tree as misshapen and crook-backed as an old crone, which leaned out precariously over the crumbling edge, a twisted nest of eroded roots exhumed to the open air. An osprey was perched on the farthest of the boughs, watching them with golden raptorial eyes, fine remiges’ fluttering in an eastward gale.

Under dark cloaks, fur, boiled leather and mail, they shivered against that wuthering sea-wind, the taste of salt and rain on their tongues. Ahorse, Robb looked south to the break of the horizon, there the faint grey smears of the Iron Islands collecting and conglomerating like ominous storm clouds. Backdropped by those smears, and all together closer in sight, came the ironborn fleet, with longships wider and more fortified than any found in Westeros—smaller than your standard galleon, but more swift and stalwart, made for war and for reaving. Their sleek, dark hulls broke through the rough waves like heavy plows pulled by great big sails fat with wind. Reavers moved about the decks clothed in roughspun raiment patched with salt-crust and leather armour, harshly-made pit-iron weaponry buckled and hanging from their hip. The ghastly figureheads were yawed north-eastward, coming up along the headland to slide unchallenged into Blazewater Bay. 

Last sennight it had been Ironman’s Bay, where the pickings were easiest, and quickest.  _ They want a challenge,  _ thought Robb. He then turned in the saddle and nodded towards Daryn Hornwood, who stood back with an arrow nocked. Seeing this, Benfred Tallhart, who stood beside Hornwood, lit the oil soaked linen wrapped about the arrow’s tip, the colors of fury growing bright in the morning grey. Drawing and loosing northward in a long, high arc that sent the arrow whistling and hissing into the bay, other arrows down the length of the headland took flight, one-by-one rising skyward until a great big brazier in the distance was lit atop the castle Flint’s Finger. Raiders, it signaled plainly. At the sight of the rising plumes, the harbortown Flint’s Foot would swiftly be abandoned, the smallfolk flooding behind the curtain walls of the castle, as he had commanded. No one would be a thrall or saltwife if Robb Stark had say. 

“Thank the Old Gods it’s not raining,” he said while looking at the smoke, tugging on the reins in his hands and yawing his palfrey in a half-circle. “I hate fighting on wet sand.”

“Even worse than dry sand,” Daryn agreed with a teasing laugh, hanging his longbow on the horn of his saddle and opening an oblong, pelted bag tied together along the outer edge by leather thongs. From it he pulled a composite bow, putting in it’s snug place the longbow. 

“Let’s make a wager, Hornwood!” challenged Eddard Karstark suddenly, in his hand hefting an axe with two big bearded blades as nasty as his grin. “You slay fewer men than me this day, you ride back to your little fortress in the woods and rot there till your ball hair goes grey,” he guffawed. 

Daryn plucked once at the taut string of his bow, like it were a lute and he were a troubadour testing it’s tune. “As long as you’re willing to fondle my horse’s balls should you lose.” He was grinning equally as nastily, patting the chestnut rouncey that looked none too fond of having it’s balls played with. 

“Rather its balls than yours,” snorted Karstark.

“It’s a deal, then.”

Alysane Mormont scoffed. “I’ll have both yer’ cock  _ and _ balls if you don’t shut it!”

“Oh, do please spare my horse’s poor cock, my lady,” despaired Daryn. “He does quite enjoy  _ fucking _ Karstark with it.” He cackled at his own jest and thumped his thigh. Karstark went florid about the neck and gnashed his teeth together, but before he could get a sally of his own out, there were high, thin whistles on the edge of hearing that quickly turned to piercing shrieks.

“Down!” shouted Benfred, alongside Torrhen Karstark’s, “Arrows!” 

Dull thumps accentuated the whistles as the hail of arrows embedded in the mud around them, the horses dancing and whinnying in beastly fright, their riders covering their faces and heads with whatever was at hand. Clenching his jaw and ducking, Robb tugged his mount into submission as he again turned and looked to his guard, who remained unhurt but for holes in their cloaks or gashes in their armour. 

Though not all was well. Dacey Mormont’s rouncey had been struck in the flank and was screaming and spinning and rearing while she held on as tight as life would allow. “Get that beast under control,” Robb ordered, spurring his palfrey to the cliff edge, an arrow landing in his place; the osprey perched on the tree took wing at his approach. 

Looking out over the watery expanse, Robb could make out the sigils on the sails, and the faces of the reavers below them. Emblazoned were the golden kraken on black of Greyjoy; the vairy green and black of House Blacktyde; the dark green pines strewn closely together on yellow of House Orkwood; the scourge of nettles, red and black, on white of House Tawney; the silver scythe on black of House Harlaw; the bone hand, white on red, of House Drumm; and the  black brazier on a grey masonry field of House Stonehouse. The lot of them were rough, wind-beaten, and mettle-tested men, their ugly glowers and sneers not an unfamiliar sight to the young prince. 

“Aim true, friends, the wind is cantankerous today!” Robb taunted against the howling wind and the crashing of the waves, his words lost in the sound but the impish smile no less rankling to the ironmen. Grinning wider when they drew their bows and leveled on him, he yanked his mount around and hurriedly disappeared from the edge, the arrows bouncing and caroming off the rocks and scarring the withered tree with divets and punctures. He galloped to his guard, who now waited further inland, where the arrows would be hard pressed to reach them.

“That was dangerous, my liege,” Lady Alysane admonished.

“Danger is why I have you protecting me, my lady,” Robb quipped. The anticipation of battle makes his blood hot and heady. “I believe I’ll take Daryn and Eddard on in their bet.” Hearing this, the men cheered and raised their weapons above their heads. Robb’s sword came scraping out of its scabbard as he took up the cry. “Kill them all! I want the sea  _ red _ with their  _ blood! _ ” he commanded savagely, spittle flying wildly from his lips.

“I’m not touching horse balls!” howled Eddard Karstark.

They rode hard down the length of the headland, kicking up mud and rock as they kept up the battle-cry, matching pace with the ironborn fleet as it glided into the harbor town. Along the trail were the archers that had taken up the signal; they now rained down arrows onto the fleet’s decks, piercing holes in the sails and causing general mayhem aboard, yet it were known that arrows did little to deter blooded and hardened ironmen.

The defences had been built. Wooden barriers and stacked barrels were erected along the piers, and sharp wooden spikes and rusted caltrops were planted balefully in the sand. Behind these waited men of the Wolven Company, and those few of the Flint’s smallfolk able to take up arms. Arrows thumped and caromed around them, but did little against the well placed structures. This would be a battle of steel. 

Like a ragged grey storm the ironborn flooded from their beached ships, breaking off into any direction they fancied, with no structure or command to their wild advance. The Company and Flint’s remained in place in the fish-market and hurled spears or stones, or loosed arrows, breaking the already weak line into an even more disarrayed charge that limped across the beach. 

It was when the ironborn crashed into the shoddy palisade that Robb and his men came riding into the throng of battle. Knowing the boards were slick with water, salt, fish scales and sand, Robb leapt from his mount while it was still at a canter, catching the first sword to come his way against his ribs by side-stepping the lunge and pressing on the blade with his elbow, winding his arm around and yanking brutally on the ironborn’s forearm to send the weapon out of his grasp, burying his own downward into the open chest presented to him. The blood splattering across his face only rankled the lust thrumming through his body. 

Robb turned and bent to pick up a shield split into a hemicycle. He tossed this underhand into the face of a charging ironborn further out on the pier above the water, who staggered and was roundly sent arse backward over the edge into the low tide by a boot to the chest. Robb leapt down onto the reeling ironborn and stabbed him through the chest, waves breaking around his boots as he yanked the sword back and sneered at the silently screaming, submerged face gurgling blood at him; the waters darkened red-black and then pulled back to sea, unveiling the body of it’s watery pall.

“Stark!” came a voice. Robb turned and met eyes with an equally bloody man with the kraken of Greyjoy emblazoned on his iron-studded leather brigandine. The Greyjoy’s nasty smile was bloodied by a busted lip, his harsh, angular features highlighted by grime and sweat. He thumbed his chest. “Theon Greyjoy!” he shouted in challenge, laughing at the end like his own name gave him much amusement. 

Robb scowled and waded through the bodies floating in the shifting waters, wild eyes intent on the youngest son of King Balon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands. Battles waged on the piers above him and in the surf around him, all of them ignored. When an ironborn dared stand before him, he slayed them with little effort or care. Greyjoy did much the same for his part, but cackled and shouted insults.

The two came together where the surf met the beach. No words were said as Robb raised his sword and brought it down in a heavy blow that hit like a hammer against an anvil. Greyjoy lithely rolled it off his sword and side-stepped—he was quick and svelte, like a stoate.

A following rote of equally brutal attacks pushed them back onto the upturned and body ridden beach, Greyjoy taunting every step of the way.  _ He means to tire me _ , thought Robb, breathing heavily and feeling the soreness in his arms slog the strength of his swings. His soaked furs, mail, and iron cuirass did little to help keep him light. He suddenly abated, keeping his blade in a forward stance as he took steps back to breath. Seeing this, Greyjoy reached behind him and slipped a battle axe from his belt with a beard a hand's breadth in width.

“I figured you would be taller,” mused Greyjoy, “and warged through that wolf they say you run with.” He was moving forward with no defense or technique, suddenly flying into a quick sword fleche that had Robb stumbling to get out of the way, the feinting axe’s beard catching his leather brace and splitting it. Robb winced at the audible crack in his forearm but he did not allow Greyjoy a remise. 

He pressed an attack of his own, swinging in a wide flat arc that would have split the reaver’s belly open if he hadn’t pulled back with a quick leap. Robb did not give. Off his sure footing, the ironborn prince was forced to parry the next swing hastily and sloppily, catching the blade under his axe, tangling up his arms with the awkward half-turn. 

Encouraged by his own instinctual pirouette around to the side, Robb grimaced a grin at the sickening crunch of Greyjoy’s nose breaking under his elbow. He then gave ground with a half-step back and kicked against the reaver prince’s belt, sending him tumbling to the sand and making his sword scythe against the ground, lost in the chaos of bodies and weapons. 

Robb loomed over the other prince and reached down to grapple him, but the world suddenly spun crosswise as he was taken off his feet. Robb’s head came crashing into the hard sand painfully, the grains getting in his eyes and nose and mouth, blinding and suffocating and panicking him momentarily as he wiped at his face with an equally sandy glove. A blow to the side of his head from a fist sent him rolling away insensately and in utter pain, his ears ringing. A cracking kick to his ribs had him ball up and groan, sword forgotten somewhere in his dumbness. 

Greyjoy was cursing and laughing, making it hard to distinguish if he was wrothful or amused. “Got me good, Stark,” he said, sounding much like a goose from what seemed to be clenching his broken nose.

“Was just fixing that crooked shit for you,” Robb wheezed, tasting blood from biting the lining of his mouth. The haze of pain subsided long enough for him to roll onto his back. The sky was grey. So grey and dreary. Theon Greyjoy’s face was there, too, looking down at him, all bloody and bruised about the nose. He was not amused by Robb’s jest. 

Another kick sent Robb rolling again and hissing curses at the ironborn bastard. “You’re my prisoner now, Stark,” said Greyjoy snarkily, voice clogged.

Robb laughed even though it hurt his chest and sides. “Look around you, Greyjoy.” He did, and saw that the ironborn were fleeing by the numbers back to their ships, and the defenders were running into the rout and cleaning them up. ”You stay here any longer, you won’t make it to your ship.” Robb’s grin was full of bloody victory. The sand was cold and eased the ache in his head.

“We’ll wager your life on it,” growled Theon as he gripped Robb by the scruff and yanked him roughly to his feet, turning him and stuffing an axe under his chin, nicking him. They walked, but mostly stumbled. “Anyone comes close, you order them away or—“ The blade pressed deeper and bled the shallow wound. 

Robb’s feet dragged under him, his vision half-blinded by sand and blood and dark blotches that pulsed. The Wolven Company had come to realize their commander was in danger and began to gather around, moving along the sides snarling insults at Theon Greyjoy. It was akin to a pack of wolves waiting for a tired and wounded elk to collapse.

“Craven cunt!” came, along with, “Reaver dog!” and, “Bloody arsehole!”

Suddenly Greyjoy halted their wounded march. The Company stood like a wall of bodies between them and the ironborn ship; Robb could see ironmen peering over the bulwark jeering and taunting at them, and cheering for their lord. 

“Call them off,” ordered the reaver prince.

Robb smiled momentarily. “And if I don’t?” 

His personal guard came pushing to the fore of the wall, bloody and sandy and wet. Eddard Karstark and his equally ugly brother were snarling like mangral rabid dogs, and Alysane Mormont truly looked her pseudonym of the She-Bear. Hornwood and Tallhart had arrows nocked, bows halfway to their shoulders for the draw.

Theon Greyjoy turned them in circles, taking the axe and pointing it at the soldiers. “Surrender and you’ll be spared,” Robb said, his head light, his feet heavy as lead. They stumbled somewhat, and Robb’s legs gave over, sending them to the sand. He languished there against the cold and wet sand as Theon sat up and pushed his axe against Robb’s side.

Everyone was yelling things as one, and Robb was so, so tired he heard little of it. He pressed his cheek to the sand and fought his eyes from falling completely closed. The black blotches at the edge of his vision crept and grew till he saw nothing but a sea-shell there in front of him, and a severed hand with a wedding band that shone in that grime.

“Fuck this,” hissed Theon, flipping Robb over. He lifted the axe and Robb’s vision grew dark a moment, and then there was a sharp, sharp pain deep in his chest, and he screamed louder than he ever had before at the furious, brutal burn that erupted there. The world burst into noisy chaos as Robb fell quickly into the sweet, miserable dark that closed in on all sides... 


End file.
